Robert Rector

Thursday, February 23, 2017

But excuse me if I don’t walk around whistling “Hooray
for Hollywood.”

In my somewhat jaded view, the Oscars is a shameless
group hug on the part of the movie industry for producing a handful of notable
films amid the hundreds of clunkers that
befoul the screen each year.

Think of it: The same folks who brought us
“Casablanca” and “The Godfather” also subjected us to “Batman and Robin” (characterized by one critic as“not
the worst movie ever. No, indeed. It's the worst thing ever. Yes, it's the
single worst thing that we as human beings have ever produced in recorded
history”) and “The Hottie and the
Nottie,” a film described as “crass, shrill, disingenuous, tawdry,
mean-spirited, vulgar, idiotic, boring, slapdash, half-assed, and very, very
unfunny."

All that and Paris Hilton as the star.

It’s also a night when the entertainment profession,
which has had a few thousand years to practice putting on a really good show,
rolls out a spectacle that often falls to the level of an elementary school
Thanksgiving pageant.

Then they’ll cap it off by picking “The Sound of
Music” over “Doctor Zhivago” for best picture or “Forest Gump” over “The
Shawshank Redemption.”

So I’ll curl up with a good book which will allow me
to ignore the rambling, incomprehensible acceptance speeches made by winners
who do their best acting by appearing surprised and humbled.

I’ll also miss an evening of air kisses and
disingenuous platitudes in a ceremony that conveys all the warmth and emotion
of a Walmart colonoscopy.

But wait, it may get worse.

This year’s ceremonies will be awash in enough
anti-Trump commentary to resemble open mike night at a Democratic Party beer
bust.

Want to play a drinking game? Down a shot every time a winner doesn’t
mention Trump or his policies. You’ll be
stone cold sober at the end of the evening.

I’m certainly not advocating a gag rule for our show
biz friends. It wouldn’t work even if you tried.

Give an actor a microphone, put he or she in front of
a glamorous audience of like-minded celebrities while untold millions watch on
TV, and you’re going to get some scenery chewing.

That’s why Meryl Streep has received as much notoriety
for her award show rants, specifically her Trump bashing at the Golden Globes
ceremony, as she has for her considerable acting ability.

In Hollywood, you’re only as good as you’re last
performance, scripted or otherwise.

And if Meryl Streep or Daffy Duck or whoever wants
their public to know exactly Where They Stand, nobody is going to stop them.

But there’s some thin ice here. The Oscar telecast isn’t exactly knocking the
socks off the American TV audience. Last
year’s Oscars finished with the third-lowest viewership in the show's history.

And as Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post:

“There are basically two camps right now on
ever-partisan social media: Those who think Meryl Streep's speech…criticizing
President-elect Donald Trump at the Golden Globes was great, and those who
think this kind of thing is basically Why Donald Trump Won — i.e., elite
Hollywood liberals going after the guy blue-collar voters chose to be their
president.”

Speaking of rants, there’s one other thing.

Several years ago I conceived and published a
sure-fire formula for presenting the awards in a reasonable amount of time. I
never heard back from the Academy so, on the off chance their congratulatory and
heartfelt letter to me got lost in the mail, here are my suggestions, free of
charge:

First, cut the show to two hours. Period. Start by
limiting the acceptance speeches to the top categories: actor, actress,
director and best movie. Nobody wants to hear the third assistant production
designer thank his accountant.

Forget the documentary short, the short film or any
other category with the word “short” in it. Dump the sound editing award.
Nobody understands what it is anyway.

Get rid of makeup and hairstyling. As one wag once
wrote when “Driving Miss Daisy” won in this category, it was only noteworthy if
“Jessica Tandy was in fact 20 years old and Morgan Freeman was actually white.”

Next, get a host who is witty but won’t spend an
inordinate amount of time trying to extract laughs from an audience that didn’t
come to see him or her.

Dump the dance numbers. If I want to see dance, I’ll
go to the ballet.

Cut the number of best picture nominees back to five.
Ten dilutes the value of a nomination. And adds to the insufferable length of
the broadcast.

Do this and I might just tune in.

Robert Rector is a veteran of 50 years in
print journalism. He has worked at the San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, Valley News, Los Angeles Times and Pasadena Star-News. His
columns can be found at Robert-Rector@Blogspot.Com.
Follow him on Twitter at @robertrector1.

Oh, sure, I knew I’d miss the cat pictures,
quasi-inspirational offerings and vacation pictures of people I barely knew.

But I had my reasons.

It was quite simply an attempt to mute the din of the
political bar brawl that has spilled into the streets of our country. There is
just so much tweeting, insults, bluster, and bull you can absorb before you
snap.

So I sought shelter in Netflix, hoping for a few
moments of tranquility. I figured somewhere in its vast library of movies and
TV shows, I could get in touch with some emotions other than annoyance and
angst.

I wasn’t ready to get lost in “Mary Poppins.” But I
wasn’t in the mood for “Hitler, the Rise of Evil” either.

So I watched a little of this, a little of that,
before I settled on an episode of what I believe is the finest TV series ever
made, “The West Wing.”

Which proves that if you’re a political junkie, you
can run but you can’t hide.

The episode was broadcast in 2002 and while the
battles for power and glory were more understated than today’s mouth-to-mouth
combat, the end game is much the same as we’re seeing now: crush the other guy.

In this particular script, the President, played by
Martin Sheen, is facing an investigation for withholding critical information
from the American public. He has MS and kept it a secret when he ran for the
presidency.

His opponents offer him a deal: submit to a Congressional censure and the
investigation will be called off.

I didn’t stay up half the night to see how this crisis
played out in subsequent episodes because (1) it was past my bedtime and (2)
this is exactly the kind of ongoing political catastrophe, even if it was a
fictional one, I was seeking to forget for a few hours.

But there’s no escape. You can confine yourself to
watching the Cartoon Network but the sound and fury of the real world will
break down whatever barriers you erect.

So I retrieved the tablet from the trunk and restored
the phone aps. My head was removed from
the sand.

I’m certainly no millennial but I do Facebook and
Twitter finding it a good way to stay up with family, friends, former and
current colleagues and to stay abreast of current events.

But Facebook in particular has become inundated with anti-Trump
rants. I would guess 75 per cent of the posts I receive involve hand-wringing
and angst over the president and his actions.

OK, I get it. And I share your concerns.

But it seems everyone feels a need to personally express
their dismay with the President on a daily basis and they all end up saying the
same thing: that he’s unstable, dishonest,
thin skinned and dangerous. His actions
could cause irreparable harm to the nation if not the world that could take decades
to repair.

To the barricades!

But, of course, we knew that before he was elected.

I’m all for dissent.
I’m all for activism. They are the cornerstones of democracy. And I believe the president --- any president
--- should be called out if his actions run contrary to the values of the
people he serves.

But posting on Twitter isn’t an act of activism. Neither
is placing goofy pictures of Trump on Facebook. There’s good chance you’re merely
preaching to the choir. If you want to express yourself, call an elected official and unload. Believe me, they listen.

Besides, nobody is doing a better job of making
himself look foolish than Trump himself.
And the American people know it.

The daily Gallup tracking poll conducted this week found
that just 40% of Americans approve of President Trump's job as president so
far, compared to 55% who say the disapprove. The negative 15-point spread is
the highest recorded in the poll since Trump took office January 20.

Trump's low approval rating is atypical for a new
president. Former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton all
enjoyed approval ratings in the high 50s in Gallup tracking.

His own party, which never warmly embraced his
candidacy, is getting nervous. They understand that government by chaos is not
a known recipe for success. Inquiries are being made. Investigations are planned.

And all the alternative facts are not going to explain
it away.

Stay calm. And stay tuned. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.

Robert Rector is a veteran of 50 years in
print journalism. He has worked at the San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, Valley News, Los Angeles Times and Pasadena Star-News. His
columns can be found at Robert-Rector@Blogspot.Com.
Follow him on Twitter at @robertrector1.

Friday, February 03, 2017

For whatever else Donald Trump has accomplished in his
first few weeks in office, he has done something nobody thought
was possible.

He has made the Super Bowl irrelevant.

This year the game and its considerable hoopla is
being blown off the front page by a president who has arrived in Washington the
way Hitler arrived in Poland. It’s hard
to avert your eyes.

Social media, print and electronic news, even
conversations over the backyard fence are about presidential decrees, cabinet
appointments, bullying of allies, saber rattling.

Politics is supplanting the forward pass. The only
thing being blitzed is the American psyche.

And it couldn’t come at a worse time for the National
Football League.

It is still reeling from a concussion scandal, in which
team officials and owners stand accused of ignoring the fact that the game they
oversaw was maiming its participants, leaving many hobbled and brain damaged.

Its players continue to make headlines for violent
crimes, many of which involve gut-wrenching allegations of domestic violence
that result in slap-on-the-wrist punishment. One player accused of assaulting
his wife nearly two dozen times was suspended for one game.

TV ratings are down.
Teams are on the move. Residents
of Our Fair City wept with joy when the Rams, gone these many years, returned
to Los Angeles. Now they just weep, their heroes of yore replaced with a bunch
of bad actors.

Then, when we weren’t watching, the San Diego Chargers
snuck into town on a midnight freight to the cheers and applause of no one.
They should change their name to the Uninvited. They may turn out to be the
Unwatched.

Los Angeles,
landing pad for losers.

Talk about an image problem. It has gotten so bad that
the NFL hired Joe Lockhart, a key strategist for President Clinton during the
Monica Lewinsky scandal and the resulting impeachment, to right the ship.

Check the imminently qualified box on his resume.

In the past, the league could count on the Super Bowl
to put a fresh scrubbed image on its product. Now in its 51st year,
it has gained the stature of a national holiday and grabs more media attention
than a papal coronation.

But this year the hype is strangely muted.

For the record, the game with be played in Houston and
feature the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons. North versus South, grits versus chowder, an iconic
old champion versus an upstart.

It’s a promoter’s dream. And nobody seems to care.

The NFL better hope that Trump, in the middle of the
game, doesn’t announce he’s building a moat around the continental United
States, barring Lutherans from entering the country and declaring war on
Switzerland.

One Trump Tweet and CNN will win the ratings for
Sunday.

There is a certain amount of irony here. Two of Trump’s
most ardent supporters are Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft and the team’s star
quarterback Tom Brady.

That should give the President a rooting interest in
the game. And give lots of other people someone to root against.

Let’s face it.
The Super Bowl isn’t going to disappear. By the time Sunday kickoff
rolls around, we can anticipate a viewing audience larger than Trump’s
inauguration, if you can imagine.

Because the game is really about two things: gluttony and gambling.

If you were to add up the calories per serving for
every food item a household purchased during the week of the Super Bowl,
it would equal more than 6,000 calories, according to a Washington Post
story. That's the largest number of calories for any week through the year —
more even than during Thanksgiving — and it's not even all that close.

And when it comes to putting your money where your
mouth is, American Gaming Association President Geoff Freeman said that his
organization expects the Super Bowl to elicit $3.8 billion in illegal wagers.

The bets know no bounds. For example, you can bet on
what color Gatorade will be dumped on the winning coach. Or the jersey
number of the first player to score a touchdown.

You can also put your hard earned cash on who the
Super Bowl MVP will mention first in his speech: Teammates are at 2/1,
followed by God (5/2), Fans (5/1), other team (7/1), coach or family (12/1),
owner (25/1) and none of the above at 4/1.

Of course, you can develop your own bets right at
home. Who will be the first to take a bathroom break, who will be the first to
dump a plate of nachos cheese-side down on your new couch, who will be the
first to say "I don't get it" after a multimillion dollar commercials
screens, who will be the first to doze off in the middle of the game after
consuming hot wings, chili, pizza and beer.

Note to gamblers: 26 percent of people say that God
plays a role in determining the outcome of a game, the Public Religion
Research Institute found.

Let the game begin.

Robert Rector is a veteran of 50 years in
print journalism. He has worked at the San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, Valley News, Los Angeles Times and Pasadena Star-News. His
columns can be found at Robert-Rector@Blogspot.Com.
Follow him on Twitter at @robertrector1.

From the New York Times: “Because of an editing error, an article
Monday about a theological battle being fought by Muslim imams and scholars
in the West against the Islamic State misstated the Snapchat handle used by Suhaib
Webb, one of the Muslim leaders speaking out. It is imamsuhaibwebb, not
Pimpin4Paradise786.”

From the Guardian: “Margaret Ritchie is not the MP for
Down South as we suggested. Nor is she the MP for Up North. Her seat is South
Down.”

From the Huffington Post: “This story originally said
Marr asked Corbyn about a capella group The Flying Pickets. He a actually asked
about flying pickets, people who travel to attend pickets during strikes. In
our defense, both are associated with the 1980s.”

From the New York Times: “In an article March 20 about
wave piloting in the Marshall Islands misstated the number of paths that could
be navigated without instruments among the 34 islands and atolls of the
Marshall Islands. It is 561, not a trillion trillion.”

From Wired: “Due to an oversight involving a
haphazardly installed Chrome extension during the editing process, the name
Donald Trump was erroneously replaced with the phrase, ‘Someone with tiny
hands’” when this story was originally published.

From the New York Times: “A television review Friday
about the new Amazon series ‘Goliath’ included an inaccurate discussion of the
show’s plot structure. The critic
mistakenly watched the first two episodes out of order.”

From the New York Times (and I’m glad I didn’t take
the call on this one): “The listing of highlights about the wedding of
Cassandra Ilich and Shaun Reed, featured in the Vows column last Sunday,
misstated the number of stones in her engagement ring. It has nine stones, not
seven.”

From the Boulder Camera:” EDITOR'S
NOTE: Comments attributed to a Trump campaign spokeswoman were removed from an
earlier version of this story at her request after she learned she would be
identified by name.”

From the New York Times
whose editors must be wondering if anything in this story was correct: “An
obituary on Wednesday about the pilot Bob Hoover referred incorrectly to his
escape from a prisoner of war camp in the final days of World War II. While he
escaped from the camp with a friend, only Mr. Hoover then flew a German
aircraft to freedom; his friend was not with him on the plane. The obituary
also misstated the name of the Ohio airfield, now part of Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base, where Mr. Hoover was based after the war. It was Wright Field, not
Wilbur Wright Field. In addition, the obituary misidentified the Bell Aircraft
X-1, which Mr. Hoover trained to fly. It was a rocket plane, not a jet. The
obituary also misidentified the company with which North American Aviation, for
which Mr. Hoover worked as a test pilot, merged. It was Rockwell-Standard, not
Rockwell International. And the obituary referred incorrectly to the P-51
fighter. It was a propeller plane, not a jet, and Mr. Hoover did not test it at
Wright Field. In addition, a picture caption with the obituary misidentified
the plane shown with Mr. Hoover. It is an F-100D Super Sabre, not an F-86
Sabre. And because of an editing error, the byline for the obituary misstated
the surname of the reporter in some copies. He is Craig H. Mellow, not Bellow.”

Best Restaurant Review of the Year

The Trump Grill by Tina Nguyen, Vanity Fair

Ngyuen, whose regular beat
is politics, took note of everything, from the bathroom situation that she
compared to lining up for essentials in Venezuela to the fact that a pig’s
eyeball she once ate on a dare tasted better than the Trump Grill’s Gold Label
Burger.

She waxes especially eloquent on the
faux lavish touches all around the lobby-style restaurant, such as the
French-styled art décor that looks as though it were actually purchased at
a Home Goods. She uses this as the occasion to cite a now-famous Fran Lebowitz
quote, that Trump “is a poor person’s idea of a rich person.” Vanity
Fair reportedly got 13,000 new subscribers within 24 hours of the
story running after Trump tweeted angrily in response.

Notable Dish: Filet
mignon. “The steak came out overcooked and mealy, with an ugly strain of pure
fat running through it, crying out for A.1. sauce (it was missing the promised
demi-glace, too). The plate must have tilted during its journey from the
kitchen to the table, as the steak slumped to the side over the potatoes like a
dead body inside a T-boned minivan.”

Best Wordsmithery (from the Washington Post)

Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you’ve
gained.

Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a
flat stomach.

Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you
absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

Gargoyle (n.), gross olive-flavored mouthwash.

Flatulance (n.), emergency vehicle that picks you up
after you are run over by a steamroller.

Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts
worn by Jewish men.

Foreploy(n): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the
purpose of getting laid.

Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation
with Yiddishisms.

Skilljoy (n.): The would-be friend who’s a bit better
than you at everything.

Percycution (n.): Giving your child a name he will hate
for the rest of his life.

Coughin (n.): A small enclosure designed especially
for smokers.

Typochondriac (adj.): A paranoid proofreader.

Ignorial (n.):A monument that nobody
visits.

And finally, the year in politics summed up by Dave
Barry:

“…the American people,
looking for a leader, ended up with a choice between ointment and suppository.
The fall campaign was an unending national nightmare, broadcast relentlessly on
cable TV. CNN told us over and over that Donald Trump was a colossally
ignorant, narcissistic, out-of-control sex-predator buffoon; Fox News countered
that Hillary Clinton was a greedy, corrupt, coldly calculating liar of massive
ambition and minimal accomplishment. And in our hearts we knew the awful
truth: They were both right.

It wasn’t just bad. It was
the Worst. Election. Ever.”

Happy New Year.

Robert Rector is a veteran of 50 years in print
journalism. He has worked at the San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles Herald
Examiner, Valley News, Los Angeles Times and Pasadena Star-News. His columns
can be found at Robert-Rector@Blogspot.Com.
Follow him on Twitter at @robertrector1.

Monday, December 12, 2016

It’s the topic du jour thanks in large part to the
fact that it has been shamelessly embraced by our President-elect who has
become a walking, talking supermarket tabloid.

“All I know is what’s on the internet,” he famously
remarked.

You’ll find it in e-mails and web sites that publish
hoaxes, propaganda and disinformation to drive web
traffic inflamed by social media.

Fact checked? Sources? No need for that. If it
ridicules someone you oppose, well, then, it must be true. It may be garbage,
but if it's presented as red meat, people will bite.

Indeed, it mirrors modern-day politics where debate is
now a knife fight and those with differing opinions are enemies to be crushed.

It is malicious gossip created anonymously
in the dark corners of the Internet and produced for profit by those who put
cash above conscience. It is the work of conspiracy theorists who give paranoia
a bad name.

It is reminiscence of the tin foil hat set
who used to fire off single spaced typewritten letters to newspapers written in
all caps and headlined, “Wake Up America!”

Now, thanks to the internet, they have the
entire world as an audience.

I have been a soldier of long standing in
the war against this gibberish. It seems I have a number of family members, friends
and acquaintances who have generously included me on the mailing list of these
harebrained chain letters.

Their numbers include accountants,
lawyers, engineers, business owners, doctors, people who at one point in their
lives must have learned critical thinking skills but now embrace vitriol.

I know exactly when this stuff started
landing in my e-mail queue. It was the day Barack Obama was sworn in as
president.

Over the next eight years, I was informed
that Obama is a Muslim. Not just a Muslim, but a Jihadist. He installed a
prayer rug in the Oval Office. He was sworn in on the Koran, not the Bible.

He refuses to salute the flag. He
has a secret plan to take away our guns. He is using a Cold War-era
mind-control technique known as "Delphi" to coerce Americans into
accepting his plan for a United Nations-run communist dictatorship.

Obama's efforts to force banks to lend to
African Americans in the mid-'90s led to the subprime mortgage
crisis that killed the economy in 2008.

He plans to deliver the country to Islamic
jihadists who will convert our churches to mosques, veil our women, toss our
liquor into the Pacific Ocean and pack the halls of Congress with radical
clerics. He is a fascist. He is a socialist. He is in fact the Antichrist.

I'm still waiting for one these websites to run a correction that says, "For the Record: Everything we wrote about Obama is wrong."

Hillary Clinton had no sooner declared for
the presidency than she was branded a lesbian who had an affair with Yoko
Ono. She once said that children should be raised and trained by the
state, and parents should have only a secondary role. She and President Obama
were charged with being “accessories to terrorism” by the Egyptian government.

Hillary is in fact a tool of the Dark Lord
Lucifer sent to oppose Jesus Christ in the Last Days.

Like any newsperson, I dutifully
researched some of these claims and explained to my chain mail buddies that
these so-called facts didn’t hold up upon examination.

I
further pointed out that if any of these claims were even remotely true, it
would be front page news and that the good people of America would be marching
on the White House with torches and pitchforks. Neither of which happened.

I should have known what would come
next. I was informed that the media, me
included, was involved in covering up these claims and was part of an insidious conspiracy that included
untold millions of people.

One texted, “I’m glad I don’t
live in your world where everything you read is wrong.” Which is something I
could have said to him.

Ultimately, I decided to lick my wounds
and live to fight another day, directing these true believers to Snopes
instead. I had reached the point where I was incredulous that people could
believe this stuff.

Then Trump was elected.

I have not lost faith in the American
public, however.

Post-Trump, the New York Times has
seen "a net increase of approximately 132,000 paid subscriptions to our
news products," the media giant told CNBC.

The Washington Post’s surge in new
sign-ups parallels the Times,’ according to published reports.

Though the Post, a privately owned company,
doesn’t release much data on its business performance, it said that ”We began
to see a strong surge in digital subscriptions over the summer, and those
numbers continued to increase through the month of November. Our monthly
average of new subscriptions (July through November 21) is up 73% from the
first half of the year.”).

The Los Aneles Times saw a 60 percent
increase in new digital subscriptions in the weeks following the election
according to the Columbia Journalism Review. For the month of November, the
paper added more than four times as many new subscribers as it did during the
same period in 2015.

At The Wall Street Journal, orders and new subscribers were up
300 percent on Nov. 9, versus an average Wednesday.

It appears Real News may be trumping Fake
News. And that’s Good News for all of us.

Robert Rector is a veteran of 50 years in
print journalism. He has worked at the San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, Valley News, Los Angeles Times and Pasadena Star-News. His
columns can be found at Robert-Rector@Blogspot.Com. Follow him on Twitter
at @robertrector1.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Some of what follows is from a column I wrote early
last spring but it seems especially pertinent now as we grope through the
darkness of a Trump presidency.

America is a country of slogans, rallying cries born
from the fear and despair of uncertain times.

In the past, there has been “Remember the Maine,”
“Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead” and “Nixon’s the One.” Some of them have inspired us.

This week, “Canada, Here We Come” has joined the list.

Many have cast their gazes northward looking for safe
haven from the perceived horrors of a Trump administration.

I tend to dismiss these vows as so much political
hand-wringing, born more of angst than determination.

And abandonment in the face of adversity is a cure
worse than the disease. After all, if we all hit the road every time someone we
opposed was elected to public office, our country would be as vacant as a
politician’s promise.

But there seems to be momentum here. On election night, Canada’s
citizenship and immigration website crashed as it was flooded with
interest.

Remi Lariviere, a spokesman for the Canadian
immigration agency, told the New York Times Wednesday morning that the cause
was “a significant increase in the volume of traffic.”

By then, the site was taking about half a minute to
load but was accessible shortly before 8 a.m. Eastern. “Move to Canada”
remained among the top trending search topics on Google.

This comes as no surprise to Canadians. Twelve years
ago, as George W. Bush took a commanding lead over John F. Kerry in the polls,
Canadian immigration applications tripled. Visits to the immigration
department's website skyrocketed from an average of 20,000 per day to 115,000
the day after Bush won the election.

And, according to one Canadian publication, American
conservatives are not immune. “Move to Canada” +Obama spiked in 2008,
and was most popular in southern states. It doesn’t appear, however, that many
of them actually fled a Democrat in the White House.

That could be because a county known for higher taxes,
universal health care and stringent gun control may not have been the
paradise they sought.

Last Spring, as Trump was emerging as a bona fide
candidate, Rob Calabrese, a radio host in Nova Scotia, was inundated by more
than 3,000 inquiries after he, on a lark, set up a website last month
inviting anti-Trump Americans to move to Cape Breton, an island along the
Atlantic coast that has lost population as industries have left.

One wag called it “The Land of the Flee.”

But while Canadians are a friendly and welcoming
people, that doesn’t necessarily mean they want you to move next door.

Unless you fall into certain categories, including
students in higher education or someone trained in a list of professions found
in the North American Free Trade Agreement, you could be out of luck.

“Sometimes I’ve had Americans who feel that they can
just drive across the border,” said one immigration lawyer. “It comes as a
surprise to them, ‘Oh what do you mean, I have to qualify?’ Yes, you do have to
qualify.”

And even those who do can expect to spend six years or
more doing paperwork and living on Canada’s equivalent of a green card to build
up residency requirements. Of course, a Trump presidency could be over by then.

There are other obstacles and adjustments as explained
by Margaret Wente, an American-born columnist at The Globe and Mail in Toronto.
There is no good Southern barbecue, she said, a house in Vancouver will cost
you $2.4 million and the brutal winters can last six months.

Then there are the cultural differences, she added:
“You will have to learn some weird local customs, like saying ‘sorry’ when you
bump into someone on the sidewalk.”

My advice: if you want to live in blissful
isolation, go to the North Woods of Maine or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
That way you can maintain your citizenship even as you curse the country that
bestowed it upon you.

Or better yet, stay and fight for what you believe
in. It’s the American way.

Robert Rector is a veteran of 50 years in
print journalism. He has worked at the San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, Valley News, Los Angeles Times and Pasadena Star-News. His
columns can be found at Robert-Rector@Blogspot.Com.
Follow him on Twitter at @robertrector1.

Thursday, November 03, 2016

Understanding the subtleties of presidential polling
is like trying to decipher the fine print on your cell phone bill.

Headache inducing.

I remain transfixed by the polls, however. Like many
of my fellow Americans, I want to know how this insufferable bloodbath is going
to turn out.

Well, the polls tell us Hillary Clinton is winning.
No, wait, Donald Trump may be winning. But Poll A is using faulty data. And
Poll B has a political agenda.

Poll C tells us Trump could win if the moon is in the
seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. Poll D is being manipulated by
Russian hackers. Or maybe it’s North Koreans.

There is only one thing to do. Conduct your own
research. Which is what I have done using the lightly regarded and completely unscientific
PYS method.

PYS stands for Political Yard Signs and I spent the
last couple of days prowling my Zip code and carefully tabulating the numbers
of signs for each candidate.

My conclusions:
nobody is passionate enough about either one of these folks to stick a
sign in their front yard.

I found two Clinton signs, two signs for Libertarian
presidential candidate Gary Johnson and none for Trump. Which is somewhat
surprising since our neck of the woods is thick with Republicans.

Maybe people who support Trump are fearful that by
displaying a sign they will be identified as racist, misogynistic no-nothings.
Which, of course, they would be.

Or maybe it’s because, according to their web site, a
Trump yard sign will set you back $20 to $30.
Clinton’s go for a more modest 12 bucks.

The most signs I saw in my neighborhood were in
support of a local community college bond issue. Apparently, there’s nothing like sprucing up
the old junior college to get the juices flowing.

What does this all mean? Very little as it turns out.

Phillip Bump, writing in the Washington Post,
explained it this way:

“The problem with lawn signs, as any campaign manager
would probably tell you, is that they are expensive, annoying,
logistically tricky to distribute and — most importantly — don’t seem to
do much of anything.

“Candidates like to feel as
if they’re winning. Campaign managers like to know that
they’re winning or at least making progress. So campaign managers like things
that have either measurable effects on voters (like identifying targeted
supporters) or demonstrated past effects (like advertising). Lawn signs don’t
fit into either category.”

The Post story cited a study by Donald Green, a
professor at Columbia University who has done decades of work assessing the
utility of various methods of voter outreach. Green partnered with researchers
at universities in Upstate New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia to test signs in
four races at the federal, state and local level.

Their conclusion: “[I]t appears that signs typically
have a modest effect on advertising candidates’ vote shares — an effect that is
probably greater than zero but unlikely to be large enough to alter the outcome
of a contest that would otherwise be decided by more than a few percentage
points.”

In other words, the next time you feel the urge to erect
a political sign on your front yard,
remember this: you’re probably not going
to change anybody’s mind.

But this is a great country. Even the millions of
voters who don’t like either candidate can express their feelings via yard
signs.

There’s the “We’re All Screwed 2016” model, another
that says “Vote Nobody,” the Uncle Sam model that declares, “I Want You to Stop
Voting for Idiots” and one that offers three choices: “I Am (1) A Democrat; (2) A Republican or (3)
Drinking Another Glass of Wine.”

Finally, there’s a sign that declares in not so subtle
language that “Everyone Sucks. The U.S. Is Doomed.”

Which just might be the prevailing sentiment next
week.

Robert Rector is a veteran of 50 years in
print journalism. He has worked at the San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, Valley News, Los Angeles Times and Pasadena Star-News. His
columns can be found at Robert-Rector@Blogspot.Com.